TechCrunch making $200 web tablet? Hmmmm...

By Jeff Moriarty (Intel) (33 posts) on July 22, 2008 at 10:20 am

Yesterday TechCrunch announced they are building their own $200 web tablet, and asked for help doing it.

The planned stack so far is to run BSD or Linux, with the Gnome desktop. We will probably take the Gnome Onscreen Keyboard project and adapt that as the primary input device ... there will be Firefox, running in a stripped down interface mode with a simple system tray showing battery life and wifi (and simple settings for the device). Plugins would include Gears, Flash and probably either VLC or Mplayer with open codecs for media.

On one hand, I have to admit to a certain amount of skepticism to be able to hit that price point. A lot depends on the choices they make, which are already being thrown around in near infinite combinations in their blog comments.  I think their biggest issues are going to be battery life (long enough), processor choice (speed for video), and radio availability (WiFi alone just doesn't cut it).

On the other hand, I think there is a great market for this.  Asus' Eee PC already showed a nice low-end, low-cost niche, and TechCrunch is exactly right about the iPhone screen being too small for full web browsing.

Will it fly? Will it die? Will they put Intel Inside? ;) No idea, but it will be fun to watch it develop and see how it influences the other efforts underway.

Categories: Mobility, Open Source

Comments (9)

July 22, 2008 11:55 AM PDT


paul		 One Tablet per child
July 22, 2008 12:06 PM PDT

Josh Bancroft (Intel)
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 And I want a pony! :-)

I wish Arrington and friends the best of luck. I suspect they're going to quickly learn that their goal is a little harder to accomplish than they first guessed. They're not the first, or the last, to try for this ideal...
July 22, 2008 1:55 PM PDT


Jeremy Schultz		 I wondered if you'd blog on this. Aren't they building a MID? My thought was that this verifies Intel's vision a bit here; a good 500+ wanted to help build one within just a couple hours.

Another thought: Should Intel participate?
July 22, 2008 2:22 PM PDT


michael arrington		 So, help us build it. Seriously.
July 22, 2008 2:57 PM PDT

Josh Bancroft (Intel)
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 OK, Mike. What do you need? Seriously.

We'll be happy to sell you a processor that's engineered and designed for this very thing - low power, low heat, very small - http://www.intel.com/technology/atom/index.htm

We're working with the open source community to get an operating system and suite of useful apps for devices like these. It's been going for a couple of years, and is pretty far along. It's probably the best choice out there for a device like the one you're describing. http://moblin.org There are several sessions and keynotes about Mobiln at OSCON, going on right now.

And finally, we (Intel Software Network) have an active developer community ( http://softwarecommunity.intel.com/communities/mobility ) for people who are writing software for this new class of devices, and lots of tools (SDKs), documentation (including a wiki - http://softwarewiki.intel.com/mid/Main_Page - why not sketch out your development ideas and requirements there?) and access to hordes of really smart software engineers at Intel who have literally written the book on this stuff.

What else can we do for you? (Not being sarcastic - honest question)
July 22, 2008 3:21 PM PDT


Loren Heiny		 Josh, How about going the other direction and finding people within Intel that might be interested in fascilitating this or who work on existing MID reference designs. Seems like it could be a better reference design that some other MID prototypes I've seen.
July 22, 2008 3:32 PM PDT

Josh Bancroft (Intel)
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 Loren - that's a good idea. Jeff would probably know those people better than I, and I'm sure he's already got some thoughts. It might be a little harder to get results from those people, since they're most likely already engaged with OEMs in various stages of development, but there has to be someone, somewhere inside Intel who wants to talk to Arrington and crew about making his idea happen. :-)
July 23, 2008 5:38 AM PDT


Carlos		 Yes, the Atom could be used for this task, but is it the best solution? Integrating the Atom with all the other elements it's a technical problem (testing, debugging, certifications...), which I don't know if they can justify at the 200$ cost. Using a Computer on Module would convert this technical challenge to a - or at least for the most part - logistical one.

What do you think?

PS: I don't know if the Atom has a more tailored and smaller board for this task than the D945GCLF I've seen on the specs.
July 23, 2008 10:15 AM PDT

Jeff Moriarty (Intel)
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 @Michael - Sorry for reply lag - at OSCON this week. If you're around, I would love to connect and talk. If you're not around, would love to talk. You can email me at jeff dot moriarty at my company's name dot com.

And thanks to Josh for posting the links and question - so what DO you need? I can't commit Intel resources, but to Loren's point I can certainly make this effort known internally, but I know a lot of people inside Intel are already aware of your post. Could it use Atom? Could it use Moblin? Like I said, I'm a bit skeptical but always happy to discuss. Challenges are fun.

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